Hello,
Ive been wondering why on some Queen Anne/ Chippendale style chairs one rear leg looks to be cocked inwards (side ways when viewed from front).
Also I see that many Philadelphia and New England chairs had the side rails with through tennons on the back. Does any one know the preference of more southerly craftsman? Say, Williamsburg or Charleston?
Thanks for any help.
Replies
Chuck,
It could be just perspective, I have never seen a properly built chair when the back legs were not the same on both sides, and yes they usually splay outwards (bigger at the crest, smaller at the floor).
In Williamsburg or Charleston there was usually the typical blind tenon to my knowledge. I think only Philadelphia is known for through tenons.
Cal
What you are seeing is cant. The inward cant of the rear legs give these chairs lift and delicacy. The appearance that only one leg is canted is a photographic defect. Looking face on to the chair, the rear legs cant (or splay outward if you prefer) like a set of t.v. rabbit ears (although not nearly as much).
Cant complicates the joinery - the tenon on each side rail has to be twisted or the mortise chopped at an angle to account for both the canted legs and the parallelogram shape of the seat. Looking at the tenons face on, they will look like a clock dial - twisted at about 11:25 or at 12:35 depending on which seat rail you're cutting (right or left). The amount of twist in the tenon depends on the amount of cant. Modern "art" chairs (cartoonish little boogers) often have severe cant that looks ridiculous to me.
Will Neptune has done the definitive article on cutting the joinery for chairs with canted rear legs. See the FW archive (you'll have to subscribe). FWIW, this is one of the last really high-quality advanced woodworking articles to appear in FW, IMO. You will not be able to work in the Chippendale style without understanding the layout that Neptune covers.
Other chairs (Arts and Crafts style for example) have only the parallelogram shaped seat to deal with - the back legs have no cant. The tenons are only angled when looking at the side rail from the top, they have no "face on" clock dial type twist that a chair with canted legs has.
If you cut mortises at an angle you won't have to cut the tenons with twist, however this forces you to shorten the back rail tenon as Neptune points out in his article. This weakens the construction.
Edited 1/9/2008 7:27 am ET by BossCrunk
BC,
Will Neptune has done the definitive article on cutting the joinery for chairs with canted rear legs. See the FW archive (you'll have to subscribe).
Or go to issue 143 pgs 60-65
Lee
Chuck,
I suspect what you are seeing is a trick of photography. That is, the rearward curve of the legs when "seen" by the camera at a certain angle or viewpoint, makes it appear that one leg is curving inward. This may be compounded or exaggerated by certain chairs having strong English style antecedants, where the rear leg tapers towards the floor then swells outward into sort of a hoof foot at the bottom.
Then too, many Hepplewhite and Chippendale style chairs, and a few of the Queen Anne style, are wider in the back at the crest rail than at the floor. That is, the rear legs are not parallel, (the rear seat rail is trapezoidal in shape, longest parallel side at the top) which gives the back of the chair a "pigeon-toed" appearance.
Not many New England chairs had through tenons. The Connecticutt chairs by the Chapin group of makers are an exception to this. This may be because one of the Chapin family was trained in Philadelphia, and brought the method back home with him, or that he was trained by another maker with the same background in "the old country" as the Phila tradition. In this vein, I have had in my shop a set of QA period Dutch chairs that exhibited the same construction methods as Philadelphia Queen Anne chairs of the same period: through tenons at the rear of the seat, and front legs with a tenon worked at their top that extended through the horizontally framed compass seat.
There is a group of Chippendale style chairs associated with the Winchester, VA area that has through tenons, combined with a splat pattern not associated with Phila (according to John Kirk, in his American Chairs). Interestingly, the Chapin chairs have a very similar splat design. Could the Winchester maker, and the Connecticutt maker have had similar European backgrounds/ training?
As far as I know, the Williamsburg chairs do not have through tenons. There has been a great deal of recent scholarship on this group of chairs, illustrated in Gusler's groundbreaking book, Furniture of Williamsburg and Eastern Virginia. Many of his atributions of chairs to Williamsburg have been re-attributed to a group of makers in the Fredericksburg- Rappahannock River Valley area. For more on this, you might want to read articles in the 2006 volume of American Furniture, from the Chipstone Foundation.
The SC chairs illustrated in Kirk's Chairs do not have through tenons, according the their descriptions, though none are attributed to Charleston.
Ray
A prediction - there won't be ten substantive posts in this thread and I've noticed that a thread on how to finish a blankety-blank cutting board is up to thirteen posts.
Well, Boss,
I'd say that this piece of ground has been pretty well ploughed anyway, wouldn't you?
Regards,
Ray
An example of the trick of the photography angle, Ray? The farthest back leg does indeed look sort of like its curving in.
View Image
Sam,
Precisely so. I believe that it's due to the effect of the diagonal perspective: on the near back leg, the splay angle of the leg (withdrawing from the camera lens) tends to counteract the appearance of its rearward curve. On the far leg, the two effects add to one another--as far as the way the 3 dimensional leg fits into two dimensions.
Ray
I don't have any answers for the original poster. However, I would like to let you, Ray and others know that there are people listening. Your input is valuable.
This isn't the joint you're talking about, but it's the joint that just took me two hours to fit. I hadn't seen the article you suggested until today. My vocabulary is horrible so the article was a struggle. I think I'll just battle my way through that joint with a sliding bevel.
Ray, I included a picture of the front feet. You gave me a few suggestions a while back regarding my claw and ball feet. I took several of those suggestions, but I couldn't resist sanding...I'm sorry, I just couldn't. (Even after they were all scraped.)
Hi Matt,
I hope it wasn't me who told you not to sand those feet. I like sandpaper.
Nice work, by the way. That crest rail could use a little more work tho ;-)
Ray
All,
Pic of the current set I'm working on. A Winchester type, will have ball and claw front legs.
It may have been Taunton Macoute, sorry.
How long does it take you to fit the crest rail?
"How long does it take you to fit the crest rail?"
Well, Matt, that depends. On a chair like your Philly QA, it could take a while.
My procedure is to mark the tenons, then cut the splat to length, cut its tenons. With splat in place, lay a straightedge across the top tenon shoulder, and confirm the location of the tenon shoulders on the rear legs (stiles). Then cut those tenons, and then the fun begins.
Getting a decent fit at the shoulder/crest rail interface can be time consuming. I have spent a half hour or more, paring and twiddling to get a tight joint all round both legs, that the splat still fills in-between.
It is a simpler process on chairs like the ones I posted. Those stiles lean back and are straight, not curved. Plus the crest rail is not as dainty and stands a little rougher treatment, being knocked on and off in fitting.
Ray
Matt,
Attached is a crest of a chair I built, similar to yours.
Ray
pretty cool stuff. Thanks for posting. I feel like I'm cutting a 50 minute dovetail when I'm doing that stuff.
Gene Landon (who made the cahirs for the FWW article That I believe Matt is building the chairs from) taught me a trick for making the angled tennons.
Make the front tennons first.
mark the angle of the back leg on the chair side
plane the side down to the same angle
now you have a flat face that matches your chair leg and it's quite easy to make the tennon.
Gene said he has seen lots of evidence that this was the technique originally used to make the chairs
Here's what I was going to do. I have no training what so ever. These are the 2nd chairs that I've made and the others were significantly different. I believe that this way should be pretty simple, however. (Take note that the stiles will be at 90 degrees to the floor at the point they intersect with the rails and the rails come off the stiles at 90 degrees so the tenons are only angled in one direction.)
1. Assemble the back legs with crest rail and keystone.
2. Take the angle of the joint between the keystone and leg.
3. Transfer.
4. cut.
5. Shape.
I see no issue with this. Maybe I'm missing something.
Edited 1/10/2008 1:57 pm ET by MattInPA
looks like your post is not one of the 'substantive' posts, better luck next time.
You didn't like the third post in the thread?
Thanks for the good info Ray. It could be a trick of photgraphy. Ive found a few articles by Mack Headley making a Philadelphia style chair, and they help. Chuck
You're welcome Chuck. Good luck with your chair project.
Ray
There's an article by Garrett Hack in FWW #166 that shows a simple side chair that uses the "rotate the back legs" feature. Here's the link to a PDF of the article:
http://www.taunton.com/finewoodworking/FWNPDF/011166080.pdf
(I've never been able to figure out which content is free and which requires an online subscription, so apologies in advance if you can't open the file.)
Rotating the legs (by 4° in Hack's case) has two effects: It makes it easier to splay the top of the back of the chair (you only have to work in one plane, not two), and it gives the two rear legs a bit wider footprint, which improves stability when the sitter leans the chair back.
-Steve
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